About Us/ Who we are, what we do and why we do it

We are Carmen Uscatu and Oana Gheorghiu, and in 2012 we founded Asociatia DARUIESTE VIATA (The Give Life Association),in an attempt to make a career out of the mission we started as volunteers and to dedicate ourselves to finding solutions that would increase the living chances of Romanian cancer patients. Ever since 2009, Paula Herlo has been constantly at our side, offering us support in all our endeavors and campaigns. At the moment, she is the Honorary President of the association.

In our almost 8 years of activity, the team at Daruieste Viata has managed to raise and invest more than 6 million euro in Romanian hospitals.

In 2013, together with Ogilvy Romania, we created Bursa de Fericire (The Happiness Exchange) – the first online fundraising platform that brings a new transparency to the investments of companies or individuals in our projects to equip and modernize Romanian Oncology centers. Up until now (August 2017), we’ve raised a total of 3,284,668 shares (adding up to more than 7 million euro), which will give children with cancer a shot at life.

Daruieste Viata dedicates itself to the modernizing and equipping of Romanian clinics, particularly Oncology departments, so that as many patients as possible can benefit from European standard treatments and have more chances of living.

Daruieste Viata also does advocacy projects for legislative changesmeans to offer patients a right to live.

Our association will build the first integrated Oncology and Radiotherapy clinic within the Marie Curie Hospital of Bucharest, using only private funds.

With the help of our volunteers, we offer support to all patients who ask for our help in getting treated (either in the country or abroad), getting a second medical opinion, etc. (write to us at contact@daruiesteviata.ro), but we don’t have the necessary resources to raise funds for individual cases.

Mission. Why do we need this association?

The mission of Daruieste Viata: to increase the survival rate of cancer patients, which is under 50% in Romania, one of the lowest among European countries.

Children in Romania have half the shot of getting better than those in Western countries, for lack of appropriate hospitals and healthcare

At present, Romania doesn’t have a center for treating children with cancer, where they can benefit from all the services needed: intensive care, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

Our most important accomplishments

In 8 years, we’ve managed to do the following:

We’ve convinced the authorities to change an unjust law, that forced patients who needed to get treated abroad to wait for months for the necessary approvals, during which many of them died.

We’ve built the country’s first laboratory for the deep diagnosis of leukemias, in Timisoara, and we’ve equipped a similar one at the Fundeni Clinical Institute in Bucharest.

We’ve renovated Oncology departments for children and adults in Bucharest, Timisoara and Brasov.

We’ve equipped a few dozen hospitals with medical devices and fought the Ministry of Health in order to force them to finance the deep diagnosis of leukemias, as well as to provide the necessary oncological drugs.

More than 24,000 chances of living offered to Romanian cancer patients!